Birthday Cake Roulade
With three fluffy frosting options
I am deeply embarrassed to admit this, but I might be a birthday diva – most of my birthdays have included tears. In my younger years I blamed it on having an early January birthday: no one in town to celebrate with and leftover stocking stuffers for gifts. As an adult though I think it’s just a case of the common birthday blues - feeling like I hadn’t grown much at all in the year prior. But - I’m happy to say that this year, making these cakes, I realized how far I have come.
My previous birthday cake recipes (Brooklyn blackout and pistachio raspberry chiffon), while delicious, require some serious skill and effort. This year, I challenged myself to create a cake that is easier (no tears caused by any failure), requires minimal decoration skills, comes together in under 90 minutes of active time, and can be made in a single day. Not only did I meet those challenges, but I exceeded them (65 minutes of active time only), and along the way, I learned not to let perfection be the enemy of good enough (something Théo is constantly trying to remind me of).
The cake is delicious as well. The recipe starts with a very light, moist, and incredibly tender vanilla sponge base that might just be my new favorite go-to. It requires some technique and a couple of secret tips (including a few additions so it tastes more like birthday cake and less like a standard roulade sponge), but those are well explained below. Since the roulade cake itself is the decoration here (practically no decorating skills required here, just gentle hands), I decided to dye a couple of trials with my two favorite colors, blue and pink, and add sprinkles to the other to make it a funfetti cake. This is where I hit my first obstacle: the egg yolks skew the base color yellow, and thus, I got more of a cookie monster blue than sky blue, and mortadella pink over sunset pink. However, in order to really fix this–besides some color matching which I’ve laid out in the recipe–I would have had to scrap the sponge entirely, and it is too good not to share. So, we will call the colors teal and coral – perfection will not be the enemy of good enough!!
There are 3 frosting options that I am very proud of. Roulade cakes are often assembled with whipped cream and fruit jam; the lightness beautifully complements the sponge and means the whole cake isn’t too sweet, but because this version needed to stand vertically, I had to make a thicker cream and forgo the jam, which can be slippery. That’s when I remembered a childhood favorite, strawberry frosting, and decided to turn that into whipped cream frosting for the cake. Delicious. I then had some fun making a banana version, and it came out truly bananas – an instant top 5 frosting flavor for me. I cannot wait to make it again. You can sub in other fruits too (happy to discuss in the comments), and there is also a chocolate version that reminds me of a lighter brownie batter. These frostings are so quick to come together, so flavorful, not too sweet, light and fluffy, stable, and pipe like a dream.
For the assembly and decoration, you just cut strips and roll the whole thing up. I rolled mine up into an oval since I’m going through an oval cake phase, but you can roll yours round. Here’s the thing, though: there’s going to be a seam in the back…and the seam is not cute. This cake is delicious, requires nearly no decorating abilities (no turntable or freezing necessary), and gets assembled in 15 minutes. For those trade-offs, I’m okay with a not-so-cute seam in the back.
So, please find below my birthday cake recipe for 2026. It’s quick, easy to decorate, bursting with delicious birthday cake flavor (vanilla and/or funfetti with a a boxed cake vibe to it), is so soft, and has three whipped frosting options: strawberry, banana, and chocolate. Wishing you all an early happy birthday in 2026!
